Cliffs, coves and wildlife: is this coastal trek the best walk in Britain?

I'm walking along a grassy field dotted with sheep and rimmed with hawthorn hedgerows. Soaring cliffs drop precipitously to a cobalt sea littered with boulders. The weather is balmy, the sun warm on my back and I muse whether there is any more stunning coastal landscape than this to explore on foot?

Before I can debate it with my husband, we climb over a wooden farm gate and below us, the Atlantic Ocean hisses and roars through a narrow archway to a giant chasm called the Devil's Frying Pan. Around the next corner, we feast on cherry tomatoes, left with an honesty box in front of a fecund kitchen garden, before following a narrow hydrangea-lined path between white-washed, thatched-roof cottages that overlook the village of Cadgwith, its fishing boats winched up on a shingle beach.

I'd heard stories about Cornwall's dramatic sea coast, its expansive sandy beaches, jagged cliffs and authentic villages, and decided the best way to explore would be on foot. The remarkable 1014-kilometre South West Coast Path, between Minehead in Somerset and Poole in Dorset, follows the entire Cornwall coast. But which part should we choose? After seeing that Cornwall's Lizard Peninsula Coastal Walk was named the country's best in a 2025 survey in Which? Travel (a British magazine known for highlighting the country's best destinations), I homed in on this, the southernmost point of the UK, as the place to stride out. What sealed the deal was the stone and slate Housel Bay Hotel, a historic seaside inn, bang on the path and offering gobsmacking views and two excellent restaurants.

The Lizard Peninsula offers great wildlife watching, notably dolphins, grey seals and the occasional basking shark, not to mention puffins, gulls, peregrine falcons and the rare red-beaked black Cornish chough, but the region is not named after a lizard. Instead, it appears to be a corruption of the Cornish "Lys Ardh" which means "high place".

It's also something of a geological freak, the peninsula created by the sea floor being pushed up and colliding with the Cornish coast hundreds of millions of years ago. And its greenish, white-streaked serpentine rock cliffs are some of the most rugged in Cornwall, soaring to 75 metres. Across the moors and fields atop those cliffs are carpets of Cornish purple heath and delicate yellow centaury and pale Cornish eyebright wildflowers. Indeed, more than 600 different flowering plants are found here, nearly a quarter of all UK species. And the gravy on the Cornish pasty is the fact that the Lizard Peninsula has some of the nation's mildest weather, evoking vibes more Mediterranean than Margate.

The refurbished light and airy 1894 Housel Bay Hotel does, indeed, make the perfect base. Chef Joe Fallowfield tantalises us with inventive dishes using local lamb as well as Cadgwith crab, mussels and brill, and late summer heirloom tomatoes, figs and shore herbs at his Michelin-noted restaurant. The less-formal, glassed-in Terrace bistro highlights the catch of the day. When the weather is stormy, there are comfy chairs in front of picture windows. When it's balmy, outdoor chairs offer ideal vantage points over the cliffs.

We walk first along the wild windswept west coast, whose cliff-top moors were used as the setting for some of the galloping scenes in the popular TV series Poldark. The path climbs above Housel Bay Hotel, and we're entranced by grey seals singing as they warm themselves on the sand. We pass the squat white Lizard Lighthouse, which has prevented many a shipwreck off Lizard Point, whose jagged rocks are strung out like bared teeth above the ocean's surface.

Stopping at the historic Wavecrest Cafe, whose sunny terrace offers panoramic views, we enjoy Devonshire tea the Cornish way, spreading jam first on scones before dolloping the clotted cream. Cattle graze the moors as we stop to gawk at the striated cliffs, which look as leathery as elephant skin. We cross tiny streams emptying into narrow coves until we finally reach Lizard's famed Kynance Cove, which at low tide reveals a sandy beach linking grassy offshore islets and sea stacks.

Our walk the next day along the quieter and more sheltered east coast reveals fascinating discoveries. Just a few hundred metres from Housel Bay Hotel, we visit the Lizard Wireless Telegraph Station, located in a National Trust-restored wooden hut where in 1901 Guglielmo Marconi received the first message across the sea from the Isle of Wight. Later that year, he sent the first transatlantic signal from his wireless station at nearby Poldhu Point to St John's in Newfoundland.

The cliffs soar in this corner of the peninsula and there's a lot of climbing up and down, but the vistas are magnificent. We come across a hamlet of thatched-roof cottages at Church Cove and explore the graveyard of the lichen-draped, southernmost church in the UK, dating from the 11th century and dedicated to the Celtic abbot St Wynwalloe, son of a Cornish couple who moved to Brittany. Returning to the coast, we meet a woman walking up the hill with her pet sheep on a leash, while her sharp-as-a-tack sheep dog repeatedly drops a ball down the same hill, before racing to catch it at the bottom, only to do it all again.

Soon afterwards, we're finishing our walk at Cadgwith village, crab pots and fishing nets drying in the sun, a house in the middle of being rethatched, a crab fisherman selling fresh-from-the-sea crab sandwiches. We hear the 400-year-old Cadgwith Cove Inn before we see it, a rousing chorus of local singers and musicians performing sea shanties. "Real Ales, Real Fires and Really Good Food" notes the blackboard out front. Locals are enjoying a Sunday session in the courtyard. Another sign convinces us to stay for lunch: "Walkers, Muddy Boots and Dogs Welcome".

The writer travelled at her own expense